The Dead Don't Dance Read Online Free PDF Page B

one of my jailbird buddies deserves to be there. They know it too.”
    Amos was right. He pegged it pretty square on the head. Everybody knew he was fair, even the folks he arrested. Amos was who you wanted to catch you if you ever broke the law. You’d get what you deserved, but he’d be fair about it. Amos enforced the law. He didn’t rub it in your face.
    â€œBesides,” he whispered, “it’s Maggie’s wish.”
    Somewhere in the last three days I had rolled in pig excrement. Now it was smeared on Amos’s hands and shirt. He brushed himself off, making it worse, paused, and then looked right at me.
    â€œD.S., here I am. My uniform is now covered in pig crap, and I’ve got a radio, loaded gun, big stick, and this badge. If I could trade places with you, I would. But since I can’t, I’m here to ask you, please go inside, shower twice, shave, and get dressed. Because deep down, you know it’s best for you.” He scanned the cornfield. “It’s best for your wife, and it’s best for this place.”
    Sometimes I wished Amos weren’t so honest.
    â€œWho’s staying with her?” I asked.
    â€œI was until a little bit ago. The nurse is now. She’s a sweet girl. Pastor’s daughter. She’ll take good care of her. D.S., there’s nothing you can do for Maggie. That’s God’s deal. I don’t understand it and I don’t like it, but there is nothing you or I can do for her. Right now what we need to worry about is you and making sure that the mailbox out front goes right on saying ‘Styles.’
    â€œAnd for that to happen, you got to teach. This is what it comes down to. And don’t give me any of that stuff about not teaching again.” Amos pointed his finger at me and poked me in the chest. “You are a teacher. Why do you think God gave you Nanny to begin with? You think that was just some big cosmic mistake?” He spat again. “You think she just shared all that with you so you could keep it bottled up and to your lonesome?”
    Amos put one foot up on the steps and rested his elbow on his knee. “Not likely. You may like farming, but you’re no Papa, at least not yet. You can hide out here if you want to, but it’d be a sorry shame. Now are you gonna get cleaned up, or do I have to hose you down myself?”
    I opened the screen door and stumbled into the house, mumbling, “Dang you, Amos . . . ”
    â€œHey, I’m just honoring my promise to your wife. You married her. Not me. If you want to complain”—Amos pointed toward the hospital—“complain to her.”
    â€œI would if I could get there.”
    â€œAfter your little chat with Mr. Winter.” Amos smiled, grumbled something else to himself, and then walked to the kitchen and began washing out the percolator.

chapter four
    I SUPPOSE YOU COULD CALL ME A LATE-LIFE MIRACLE. At least I’m told my parents thought so, because my dad was forty-two and my mom forty when she gave birth to me. I have sweet memories, but not many because Dad died in a car accident pretty close to my fifth birthday and Mom suffered a stroke strolling down the cereal aisle of the grocery store six months later.
    My grandparents took me in after their daughter’s funeral and raised me until I turned eighteen and headed off to college. Despite the absence of my parents, love lived in our house. Papa and Nanny saw to that. They poured their love into three things: each other, me, and this house.
    When my grandfather built our two-bedroom brick farmhouse more than sixty years ago, he pieced the floors out of twelve-inch-wide magnolia planks and dovetailed them together without using nails. They were strong, creaky, marred with an occasional deep groove, and in the den where my grandparents danced in their socks to the big band music of Lawrence Welk, polished to a mirror shine.
    Papa covered the walls in eight-inch